AU story set in Miami, featuring Julie, Ranger and the cool, young and pretty Home Economics teacher Mickie.

HOME WORK

1) WASHING AND IRONING

"Julie, sweetie, what's all this"? I stood in the middle of the kitchen looking around finding piles of laundry on every available surface.

"It's home work daddy. Mickie said that we'd get extra credit if we had different kinds of fabrics washed and ironed."

I saw jeans, slacks, dockers, dresses, skirts, cotton shirts, silk shirts and t-shirts, even socks lined up on the kitchen counter. "Witch Mikey? Gonzales or Hällström? Did they force you or pay you to do their laundry?" I'll have a talk to them if they tricked her in to doing this.

"No daddy, Mickie is our new Home Economics teacher, she's great. Way much cooler than Mrs. Sanchez or Mrs. Holland. She's young and pretty, not stuffy at all. She said we could call her Mickie even thou her name is Stephanie Plum.

"And she said you'd get extra credits for doing the laundry? I don't remember doing laundry in HE." Then again, I don't remember attending very many of my HE classes in the day, not that Julie needed to know that. " I remember baking pie and cooking rice and beans." And our teacher was anything but young and cool. Maybe that's why.

"Yes, the home work was to separate different kinds of textiles, read the labels and wash accordingly. I know you can't wash your suits so I just washed your dress shirts. Now I just have to iron them, that's the extras. I just didn't count on there being so many. Luckily you only have black and white shirts and I didn't put my red socks in with them. You would have looked really ridiculous in a pink dress shirt."

"Yeah, lucky me. What did you put with your red socks?" Guessing by the look on her face something had been in the same load as the socks.

"Oh, nothing special, just my jeans, a t-shirt and a hoodie." Her eyes were cast downwards and toes scraping the floor, embarrassment shining on her cheeks. "Do you think Mickie will take away points for my laundry turning pink? The label on the socks was the same as the hoodie, jeans and t-shirt."

"It's a possibility." More of a probability, I thought, but didn't want to upset her more than she already was. "Was it a new pair of socks?" She nodded sadly.

"What if you just iron one cotton and one silk shirt, your pinks and leave the rest to Marisol? You could maybe take a picture of the rest of your laundry to show the amount you did. Quantity over quality, this time. Do you have to haul it all to school or is she coming here?"

"I can't leave this to Marisol, she has enough to do around here. The extra credit came from the ironing. And we need to bring it to school. I'll need to borrow your suitbag or it'll all just go wrinkly again. The bus is really crowded in the morning, unless you take me?" She was batting her lashes now. I knew she enjoyed the drive with me to school as much as I did. I just didn't have that many opportunities to take her. Overseeing two offices at once was hard work.

"Think of it this way, Marisol does the ironing anyway, now she just skips the washing part. You saved her valuable time to do other things. And you don't need three suitcases to take your home work to show the teacher. Also, I presume you have other home work to be done as well. I don't think ms. Plum would appreciate you skipping your other home work for her extra credits, do you?"

"I guess you're right, I've got math and Spanish. We've got a new Spanish teacher as well, his name is Hector Moralez. He's from Newark too, do you know him?"

"Sweetie, Hector Moralez is quite a common hispanic name. I know at least three Hectors from Newark."

"Oh, ok. I just thought since he has the same tattoo on his forearm as you do, you know, the rosary."

"I'll take you to school." I really wanted to meet Hector with the rosary and who knows, maybe I'll run in to the cool, young and pretty Mickie too.